Tuesday, April 21, 2015

TODAY’S STUDY: HOW MUCH NEW ENERGY CAN CHINA BUILD?

April 2015 (Energy Research Institute/National Development and Reform Commission)

High Renewable Energy Penetration Scenario: Vision And Consensus

We are continuously writing new chapters in our history. In the history of energy, it is an irreversible path that we will gradually move away from dependence on fossil fuels and transit to a “high renewable energy penetration” future. The international community has reached a consensus that high renewable energy penetration is a critical part of the efforts to tackle climate change and control temperature rise below 2 degrees. Europe and America have been first in taking the meaningful step of providing blueprints. As the world's largest developing country, largest coal consumer, and largest emitter of greenhouse gases, China is confronted with challenges that are more urgent and arduous as it transforms toward clean, low-carbon energy. "China 2050 High Renewable Energy Penetration Scenario and Roadmap Study" analyzes how China can gradually phase out fossil energy, especially coal, from its leading role in China's energy development, and give low-carbon green electricity a prime part to play. This vision will help advance the goal of a "Beautiful China" with the development level of medium-income countries, clear water and blue skies. The study takes high renewable energy penetration as the goal and greenhouse gas emissions and air pollutants as basic constraints; it conducts technical and economic evaluation, power system production simulation, social and economic impact evaluation, etc., and based on these optimizes renewable energy deployment pathways under different scenarios as well as puts forward corresponding implementation schemes. Results show that a high renewable energy penetration scenario in 2050 is both technically and economically feasible, in which renewables account for over 60% in China’s total energy consumption and over 85% in total electricity consumption – signifying a true revolution of energy production and consumption.

By 2050, Renewable Energy Could Meet More Than 60% of Primary Energy Demand
In a high renewable energy penetration scenario where over 60% of end-use energy consumption is electricity, the energy system in 2050 is highly efficient, with energy efficiency 90% higher than in 2010. By that time, primary energy consumption is 3.4 billion tons of coal equivalent, and renewable energy accounts for 62%.
High Renewable Energy Penetration Will Promote Fossil Energy Consumption and Carbon Emissions to Peak by 2025
Under the high renewable energy penetration scenario, coal consumption will be effectively controlled and the coal consumption peak can be reached by 2020. The consumption peak of fossil energy will be realized by 2025, and thereby reaching the goal of peaking greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 will be assured and most likely to happen as early as by 2025

By 2050, the national total power generation will be 15.2 trillion kWh, 86% of which will be renewable power and 91% non-fossil energy, while coal power drops to below 7%.

Wind Power and Solar Power Will Become Important Pillars of the Future Power Supply

Through technological breakthroughs, cost reductions as well as the comprehensively deepening of power sector reforms, between 2020 and 2040, wind and solar power will develop rapidly, with an average of annual newly installed capacity of close to 100 million kW. By 2050, 2.4 billion kW of wind power and 2.7 billion kW of solar power will be installed, with a total annual output of 9.66 trillion kWh, which will account for 64% of China’s total power generation and will become the main power source of the future green electricity system.

Various areas of the country will have the ability of developing wind power and solar power on a large scale, laying equal emphasis on centralized and distributed development.

Higher Electrification Rate Will Enable Renewable Energy to Grow to a Higher Level

By 2050, China’s end-use energy consumption will reach 3.2 billion tons of coal equivalent, of which electricity will account for 60%, 36 percentage points higher than that of 2010. Electricity will become the main form of energy for people’s production and living.

Transfrom the Electricity Transmission Network to a Platform for Optimizing Resources Allocation

With the increase of renewable power generation, we need to expand the transmission infrastructure in order to integrate renewable energy in a larger geographical area. Regional interconnection and expansion of the balancing area is helpful to reduce the changes in net load. There will be three cross regional transmission lines with a gross capacity of more than 100 million kW, respectively, the Northwest-Central China line, Central China-East China line and North China-East China line.

Technological and Institutional Innovation is the Foundation to Build a High Renewable Energy Penetration Power System

The contribution of variable power will rise from 30% to 60% in high penetration scenario as compared with in reference scenario, making it more challenging to ensure the real-time balance between electricity supply and demand. Variability and uncertainty associated with high-penetration wind power and solar power will be managed through increasing power trading in market, adding flexible generation capacity, improving the flexibility of coal power, using energy storage technology and demand response mechanism, as well as expanding transmission infrastructure.

Building a High Renewable Energy Penetration Power System at a Small or Non-Incremental Cost

In the high renewable energy penetration scenario, the average cost of electricity will rise slightly between 2030 and 2050, basically remaining between RMB0.672/kWh and RMB0.685 yuan/kWh. Most of the incremental capital investment of the high penetration scenario will be offset by saving the fuel cost of fossil energy which would otherwise happen in the reference scenario, and China could realize a high penetration scenario with a small or non incremental cost.

As a New Economic Growth Point, Renewable Energy Can Significantly Improve the Development Quality of the Overall Economy

Emerging industries like wind power, solar power, and electric vehicle will become a new economic growth point. In 2050, the added value of renewable energy industries will grow to RMB17 trillion, making a contribution of 6.2% to the GDP of that year. The added value of electric vehicle industry will grow to close to RMB 8 trillion, accounting for 2.9% of the GDP.

The high renewable energy penetration scenario will create 12 million jobs in 2050 in the renewable energy and related industries, which will promote the transmission of China’s employed population from traditional manufacturing to high value add industries.

High Renewable Energy Penetration Will Help Bring Back Clear Water and Blue Skies

Major pollutants and CO2 emitted by the combustion of fossil fuel will decrease significantly. The emissions of major pollutants (SO2, NOx, mercury, etc.) in 2050 will hold the line of that in 1980. The emissions of CO2 will decrease to 3 billion tons, making outstanding contributions to slowing down global climate change…

Review of OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The American Decades by Mark S. Friedman

OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The American Decades, the second volume of Herman K. Trabish’s retelling of oil’s history in fiction, picks up where the first book in the series, OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The Story of Our Addiction, left off. The new book is an engrossing, informative and entertaining tale of the Roaring 20s, World War II and the Cold War. You don’t have to know anything about the first historical fiction’s adventures set between the Civil War, when oil became a major commodity, and World War I, when it became a vital commodity, to enjoy this new chronicle of the U.S. emergence as a world superpower and a world oil power.

As the new book opens, Lefash, a minor character in the first book, witnesses the role Big Oil played in designing the post-Great War world at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. Unjustly implicated in a murder perpetrated by Big Oil agents, LeFash takes the name Livingstone and flees to the U.S. to clear himself. Livingstone’s quest leads him through Babe Ruth’s New York City and Al Capone’s Chicago into oil boom Oklahoma. Stymied by oil and circumstance, Livingstone marries, has a son and eventually, surprisingly, resolves his grievances with the murderer and with oil.

In the new novel’s second episode the oil-and-auto-industry dynasty from the first book re-emerges in the charismatic person of Victoria Wade Bridger, “the woman everybody loved.” Victoria meets Saudi dynasty founder Ibn Saud, spies for the State Department in the Vichy embassy in Washington, D.C., and – for profound and moving personal reasons – accepts a mission into the heart of Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe. Underlying all Victoria’s travels is the struggle between the allies and axis for control of the crucial oil resources that drove World War II.

As the Cold War begins, the novel’s third episode recounts the historic 1951 moment when Britain’s MI-6 handed off its operations in Iran to the CIA, marking the end to Britain’s dark manipulations and the beginning of the same work by the CIA. But in Trabish’s telling, the covert overthrow of Mossadeq in favor of the ill-fated Shah becomes a compelling romance and a melodramatic homage to the iconic “Casablanca” of Bogart and Bergman.

Monty Livingstone, veteran of an oil field youth, European WWII combat and a star-crossed post-war Berlin affair with a Russian female soldier, comes to 1951 Iran working for a U.S. oil company. He re-encounters his lost Russian love, now a Soviet agent helping prop up Mossadeq and extend Mother Russia’s Iranian oil ambitions. The reunited lovers are caught in a web of political, religious and Cold War forces until oil and power merge to restore the Shah to his future fate. The romance ends satisfyingly, America and the Soviet Union are the only forces left on the world stage and ambiguity is resolved with the answer so many of Trabish’s characters ultimately turn to: Oil.

Commenting on a recent National Petroleum Council report calling for government subsidies of the fossil fuels industries, a distinguished scholar said, “It appears that the whole report buys these dubious arguments that the consumer of energy is somehow stupid about energy…” Trabish’s great and important accomplishment is that you cannot read his emotionally engaging and informative tall tales and remain that stupid energy consumer. With our world rushing headlong toward Peak Oil and epic climate change, the OIL IN THEIR BLOOD series is a timely service as well as a consummate literary performance.

Review of OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The Story of Our Addiction by Mark S. Friedman

"...ours is a culture of energy illiterates." (Paul Roberts, THE END OF OIL)

OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, a superb new historical fiction by Herman K. Trabish, addresses our energy illiteracy by putting the development of our addiction into a story about real people, giving readers a chance to think about how our addiction happened. Trabish's style is fine, straightforward storytelling and he tells his stories through his characters.

The book is the answer an oil family's matriarch gives to an interviewer who asks her to pass judgment on the industry. Like history itself, it is easier to tell stories about the oil industry than to judge it. She and Trabish let readers come to their own conclusions.

She begins by telling the story of her parents in post-Civil War western Pennsylvania, when oil became big business. This part of the story is like a John Ford western and its characters are classic American melodramatic heroes, heroines and villains.

In Part II, the matriarch tells the tragic story of the second generation and reveals how she came to be part of the tales. We see oil become an international commodity, traded on Wall Street and sought from London to Baku to Mesopotamia to Borneo. A baseball subplot compares the growth of the oil business to the growth of baseball, a fascinating reflection of our current president's personal career.

There is an unforgettable image near the center of the story: International oil entrepreneurs talk on a Baku street. This is Trabish at his best, portraying good men doing bad and bad men doing good, all laying plans for wealth and power in the muddy, oily alley of a tiny ancient town in the middle of everywhere. Because Part I was about triumphant American heroes, the tragedy here is entirely unexpected, despite Trabish's repeated allusions to other stories (Casey At The Bat, Hamlet) that do not end well.

In the final section, World War I looms. Baseball takes a back seat to early auto racing and oil-fueled modernity explodes. Love struggles with lust. A cavalry troop collides with an army truck. Here, Trabish has more than tragedy in mind. His lonely, confused young protagonist moves through the horrible destruction of the Romanian oilfields only to suffer worse and worse horrors, until--unexpectedly--he finds something, something a reviewer cannot reveal. Finally, the question of oil must be settled, so the oil industry comes back into the story in a way that is beyond good and bad, beyond melodrama and tragedy.

Along the way, Trabish gives readers a greater awareness of oil and how we became addicted to it. Awareness, Paul Roberts said in THE END OF OIL, "...may be the first tentative step toward building a more sustainable energy economy. Or it may simply mean that when our energy system does begin to fail, and we begin to lose everything that energy once supplied, we won't be so surprised."

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